Thursday, October 31, 2013

Boo! What's So Scary About Halloween Costumes

As October inevitably draws grizzling about the premature
appearance of mince pies and puddings on supermarket shelves, so too does it
prompt laments about American cultural imperialism and consumerism.

Halloween is now a fixture in the Australian calendar. Spooky
decorations and themed confectionery are a familiar sight in shopping centres and
around 100,000
Halloween pumpkins are grown out of season for carving into
Jack-o-Lanterns.

Halloween has its origins in the Gaelic festival of Samhain, which coincided
with the end of the harvest season and heralded the beginning of winter. While
there are many Celtic and European traditions that precede Halloween’s
commercialisation in the United States—try carving a face into turnip instead
of a pumpkin, as is believed to have been the practice in Ireland— its adoption
in Australia has largely followed American customs absorbed from film and
television.

Groups of Australian children circulate suburban streets in
costume on Daylight-Savings-lit Halloween evenings “trick-or-treating”. Their
quest for sweets prompted a 30
per cent increase in confectionery sales in 2012, according to
a study of Halloween’s contribution to child obesity published in the Medical Journal of Australia.

With the growing celebration of Halloween by children and younger adults, the
practice of wearing costumes has followed. If you hear knocking at your door on
Halloween, you’re most likely to encounter pint-sized witches, vampires
and ghosts (the last-minute sheet with
eye holes cut out).

However, in North America, and also
among the growing number of Australian adults who participate in Halloween, costumes
are not necessarily tied to supernatural or “scary” characters. Costumes are
just as likely to mimic iconic film and television characters, celebrities, and
politicians. For instance, the most
searched-for costumes this year include Miley Cyrus, Minion from Despicable Me 2, Walter White of Breaking Bad and musicians Daft Punk.

There are “sexy” women’s versions of common costumes,
including animals, pirates, devils, fairy tale characters, and military
personnel. But there are also extremely objectifying women’s costumes, such as
the “sexy slice
of pizza”, “sexy
bucket of hot fries” and dozens of other combinations of “sexy” with types
of food. By way of comparison, a male slice of pizza costume is
decidedly unsexy.

Costumes have the potential to permit the permit the wearer to subvert ordinary
social expectations. Nancy Deihl, a scholar of costume studies, points
out that “Any time you’re allowed to wear a costume, you’re also allowed to
engage in activities outside your normal behaviour.”

Historically, as
Valerie Steele observes, women’s sexy costuming at masquerade balls from
the eighteenth century onward transgressed conventional expectations of
feminine propriety. Today, in the West, where girl and women are encouraged to
prioritise sex appeal, sexy costumes do not readily permit the wearer to step
outside the norm, but instead to remain firmly within it.

There is nothing wrong with the existence of sexy Halloween
costumes for women, or with women wanting to be found attractive. (Even despite
the fact that popular demands for men’s costumes rarely call for “sexiness”.)

What is problematic, however, is when the options available
for women become so narrow that there is little choices to be anything else. The
changing
nature of girls’ Halloween costumes shows the requirement to be sexy is now
transforming how girls dress up too.

As Halloween gradually weaves itself into Australian culture, commercially made
costumes are also finding their way on to our shop shelves. While cultural differences
mean that we’re not likely to see the racism of “sexy squaw” costumes or a
local equivalent gain acceptance, it is hard to imagine that the overwhelming
trend of sexy women’s costumes won’t also be imported, along with the inedible pumpkins.